First video captures stick insect's impossible birth

Almost like a magic trick, a Lord Howe Island stick insect's
spindly body unfurls from a tiny egg as it hatches. Now a video by zookeeper
Rohan Cleave from Melbourne Zoo in Australia has captured the process for
the first time, showing how the endangered species emerges into the world.

The stick insects are being bred in captivity at the zoo
to try to increase their numbers. Native to the island of the same name, their
population dropped dramatically after a ship was grounded there in 1918, and rats on board escaped and devoured the insects. In 2001, after discovering some survivors on a neighbouring rock, two pairs were rescued from which 9000 more have been bred to date.

It took two weeks of trial and error for Cleave to identify
an egg that was close to hatching and get the right shot. An egg typically incubates for over six
months, so it can be tricky to predict when it will break open.

I saw my C. morosuses hatching in a similar manner - it's quite a struggle for them and they invariably ended up wandering around with a seed stuck to one leg, testing everything with their little mouth-hands.